Movember

A month of Movember at St Bede’s College

This month, a brave group of men sacrificed their upper lip for a great cause. This cause is of course, Movember. A little while ago, team of “Mo-ciples” assembled, vowing to raise more money than ever and spread the message of the Movember Foundation further than before.

The question is why?

Well, consider this:

1 in 5 Australians will have (or have had) a mental health issue this year. Sadly, statistics will tell us that 72% of the men this involves will chose to do nothing about it. They will not seek professional help, talk to their loved ones about it or take any action to address the problem.

It’s perhaps not surprising then that 75% of all suicides in Australia are men.

It gets worse for our young blokes too when you consider that suicide is the leading cause of death for men between the ages of 15-44. This simply cannot be ignored when you consider our context here at St Bede’s College, Mentone.

What can we do about it?

On a very basic level we can talk to our young men. We can let them know its ok to talk and share how they feel. We can be the ones to start the conversation they might not know how to. Every time we start the conversation, the stigma surrounding mental health loses a little strength and sharing becomes easier.

Here at St Bede’s College, we have had a morning tea, a Boxercise class, a shoeshine stall, a photo shoot and this week will be chatting to boys in their Homerooms and Tutor Groups about the cause with a few more activities happening around the place.

We can also donate money to the Movember Foundation that have a myriad of initiatives to help combat this issue we face and are the ones that make this month possible in the first place.

If donating is something you would like to do, but don’t have a registered Mo-Bro to give to and would like to support our campaign, you can do that here: https://mobro.co/jamieparton

We would like to acknowledge that Movember also does some great work in raising awareness of Prostate Cancer and Testicular Cancer but we have chosen to focus on the mental health aspect this year.

Finally, while the month of November and thus Movember will soon draw to a close, it’s really important that we keep the conversation going.

Kind regards,

Jamie Parton